


Praxis inordinata

by starcunning



Series: Erebidae [6]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: 'i figured if i ended up on moenbryda's floor it would be under much sexier circumstances', Blood and Violence, Creative uses for Fire III, Crystal Braves - Freeform, Gen, Inconvenient Echo visions, and still takes a moment to go 'huh', can we all take a moment to appreciate, kallie thinks she's going to die on the floor of moenbryda's bedroom, so u know what's about to go down, technically kallie's not the MAIN wol but u kno, this is ARR 2.56, you useless bisexual.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2020-08-23 06:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20238358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starcunning/pseuds/starcunning
Summary: Moenbryda did not move from her perch.“I said, what is he doing here?” she repeated.“Saving your miserable lives,” he drawled.“Who are you talking to?” Riol asked.“Don’t worry about it,” Kallisti insisted.“An Ascian,” Moenbryda said anyway.“A what?”“Don’t worry about it!” Kallie said, still more forcefully. She clasped a hand to her shoulder, trying to staunch the bleeding.





	Praxis inordinata

**Author's Note:**

> Further [imports from tumblr.](https://starcunning.tumblr.com/post/181721856069/praxis-inordinata)
> 
> _Praxis inordinata_ is also known as Praxis porphyretica.

Riol was a cheater. It had taken her some time to notice, but he won too often. The stakes were low enough that she had to assume it was merely ingrained habit—he had no obvious tells, which only cemented this perception. Kallisti resolved to mention it to Moenbryda only if it continued to agitate her—there was no sense in risking her tearing her stitches over what was meant to be a friendly game.

It had been a poor distraction up until that revelation; even afterward part of Kallisti seethed with resentment that her presence had not been requested at the Sultana’s banquet. Lensha Ravenfeller was a more palatable morsel, and had looked so in her gown of ivory when she had left with the others on wings of aether.

Kallisti thought of Ul’dah and she was there, in the Fragrant Chamber, though the scent of spice and the sound of gentle music she had anticipated were absent. The place was an abattoir, stinking of blood, and she heard steel strike steel and screams of fright. She felt the fear welling in her own throat, the terrible surety that the Sultana was dead and the Bull’s retribution was merciless—one of his fellow members of the Syndicate had paid a blood price for his grief already. Her gaze fixed at last upon the Highlander and she saw, impossibly, that his foe was Ilberd Feare.

The realization jerked Kallisti out of her Echo-blessed vision. She had fallen from her perch to land on the stone floor, and gazed up at Moenbryda’s ceiling. A figure loomed over her—Daye, she recalled after a moment—but rather than offer her a hand up, he pointed his spear at her throat.

Kallisti lifted her head to glance around the room. In the instant before the butt of his lance struck her forehead, knocking her skull against the stone, she noted the presence of two other Crystal Braves. One was doing his best to menace Moenbryda, though she had a yalm of height on him and a hellacious tongue undulled by her injuries. The other was patting Riol down for weapons; a half-dozen blades already dropped to the stones.

Kallisti closed her eyes, bitter annoyance prickling at the nape of her neck. Some help that vision was, to have left her in this position.  
“I know you’re awake,” said Laurentius Daye.  
She had seen the way Lensha’s eyelids twitched when she was in the throes of the Echo, and briefly tried to imitate it while also casting her aether back toward its anchor point, thereby to escape. Heat seared her shoulder, bright and blooming, and she smelled blood again, real this time; hers; his lance had pierced her shoulder, disrupting her focus on both tasks. She gasped.  
“Don’t try that again,” Laurentius cautioned.

She was going to die on the floor of Moenbryda’s bedroom, which was not at all what she had imagined for her ending. Oh, she’d imagined this locale once or twice, but the circumstances were vastly different. Kallisti tried not to panic. She had a great deal of practice wrangling her fear of death, but usually she at least had her staff.  
“Well?” said a voice. “Go and retrieve it, then.”  
“Nabriales,” she said, eyes snapping open.  
At the same time, Moenbryda said, “What is _he_ doing here?”

Nabriales turned to face the scholar. Laurentius brought his spear up. Almost casually, Nabriales swiped his claws over the lancer’s throat. Crimson stained his blue uniform, beaded on the black leather of the Ascian’s robes, and spattered upon the stone floor. A moment later, Laurentius fell, too, dropping his weapon to clutch at his neck.

In the fracas, Riol had slipped a knife from his boot and pinned his Braves minder in the corner of the room. Nabriales pulled Kallisti to her feet and toward the door. She yelped at the tug on her injured shoulder, then planted her feet.  
“Them too,” she demanded.  
“Really?” the Ascian groused, and the shadows of the room seemed to coalesce into sprites of pitch, the umbral energy sparking from them quickly subduing the Crystal Braves. Moenbryda did not move from her perch.  
“I said, what is he doing here?” she repeated.  
“Saving your miserable lives,” he drawled.  
“Who are you talking to?” Riol asked.  
“Don’t worry about it,” Kallisti insisted.  
“An Ascian,” Moenbryda said anyway.  
“A what?”  
“Don’t worry about it!” Kallie said, still more forcefully. She clasped a hand to her shoulder, trying to staunch the bleeding.

Nabriales flicked a claw, and his shadow sprites darted out in front of the group, floating down the hall like ball lightning in negative.  
“I do hope you have a plan, Kallisti,” he muttered.  
“To the armory first,” she declared, “and we fight our way out.”  
“I will hold them here,” he said, and she could feel the aether gathering around him even as the Crystal Braves at the end of the hall turned to charge. Kallisti turned away, sprinting ahead, the other Scions running after. Riol hustled to the fore, ducking into the next stairway and clearing the first landings before waving Kallisti and Moenbryda after him.

“Do I want to know?” Moenbryda asked.  
“I don’t think I could explain it if you did,” Kallisti admitted. “Are you that intent on dissecting a gift?”  
“Yes. How did he know to come here?”  
“Put it down to opportunism if you like,” she hedged. “Something’s going on in Ul’dah,” Kallisti continued. “That’s what I saw.”  
“You think it’s related?”  
“Raubahn and Ilberd were swordfighting, so I have to assume—”  
Riol hushed them both, stepping out into the hall. Kallie heard the sounds of feet scuffling on the floor and peered out of the doorway to find the Hyur with his arm wrapped around the neck of another Crystal Brave. The other man made a series of choking, gurgling sounds that were only half-muffled by Riol’s fingers. He dragged the limp body into the stairwell and stripped the blue jacket from his compatriot, shrugging into it.  
“If the Braves are trying to hold the Rising Stones,” he said, “my best bet is to pass among them. I’m willing to bet this has to do with Wilred’s disappearance …”  
“What?”  
Riol looked at her, brow twisted in pained confusion. “Wilred,” he said. “One of ours. The best of us. You didn’t hear?”  
“I was off dealing with the Isle of Val,” Kallisti said.  
Riol shook his head, ushering the pair out into the hallway, pretending to hustle them before him. Kallisti didn’t bother to meet the gaze of any of the Braves they passed. She could feel the blood trickling down her arm, droplets falling from her fingertips, spattering on the stone. Her trail of crimson wound from the dormitories to the armory, and as they ducked inside, Kallisti took a deep breath. She repented of it as her shoulders rose, coughing it back out in a sigh a moment later.

She found her staff, and took it in her bloodied hands, feeling her aether flow into it, into once-living bone and wood as though it were her own body. It was a strange sensation—and a new one, having come to her only since Sharlayan, since she had slipped the moors of her mortal flesh for the briefest moment. Kallisti let out another breath, more measured, and turned back toward Riol and Moenbryda.

“Can you get out of here?” she said. “Even if you can only teleport outside, Slafborn should be able to help—”  
“It would send me back to Sharlayan!”  
“And I’d end up back in La Noscea.”  
Kallisti’s tail lashed behind her. She wanted to shrug, but her shoulder stung. “I’m not actually hearing a negative. If you stay here, you die.”  
“What makes you so sure?” Moenbryda pressed her.  
“The Sultana’s dead,” Kallisti said.  
“Gods, they’re trying to pin it on us,” Riol replied a moment later.  
“That’s the best I can figure,” she agreed. “So go back west or stay here and hang for a traitor.”  
“What about you?” Moenbryda asked. “What about the Ascian?”  
“I’ll deal with him,” Kallisti said.  
“Why did he save you?”  
“I don’t know,” she admitted. Oh, she had ideas—hopes, perhaps—but she had expected nothing to come of that little tug on the thread of aether that wound between them across whatever distance she could conceive of. “I’ll deal with him.”  
Moenbryda put the white auracite prism into her hands. “You’ll need this. And the staff.”  
“I have the staff,” she said, forcing the white stone into a pouch at her belt, marring it with blood. “Minfilia left it with me when she and Lensha went to Ul’dah.”

“Minfilia,” the Roegadyn woman repeated. “Is she alright?”  
“I didn’t see her,” Kallie said. “Almost everybody … almost everyone went.”  
“Urianger stayed behind,” Moenbryda supplied.  
“I have no idea what’s going on at the Waking Sands,” she said. “Is Arenvald with him?”  
“I think so,” said Riol.  
“Start with him,” Kallisti said. “Moenbryda, get out of here.”  
“But—”  
“You’re injured,” Riol reminded her. “Go.”  
“I’ll watch the door,” Kallisti said, adopting a ready stance. She clutched her staff with both hands, trying to ignore the pain radiating from her shoulder. The old wood had grown slick and swollen with her blood, drinking it in. “Riol, you go too.”  
“No,” he said, posting up beside her. “When she’s gone I’ll go find the others. They have no idea what’s happening here.”  
“Good luck,” said Moenbryda. Kallisti did not look back, but she felt the void in the aether, the rush of currents to fill the empty space, a moment later.

“Now you,” Kallie said, and Riol slipped back out into the hallway, striding stiffly onward, as though he was simply on patrol. She waited until he was out of sight, and thought of a crimson sigil—an insectoid pyramid. The aether around her rippled again, and she felt warmth and darkness at her shoulder.  
“Are you ready to go?” Nabriales asked.  
“Yes, but we’re going the long way,” she said.  
He scoffed. “Why ever so? I could take you to the Chrysalis now.”  
“Because Riol will need the distraction,” she said, “and I didn’t come for my weapon so that I could _not_ fight.”  
“Meddlesome little fool,” he scolded her.  
“Then abandon me to my follies,” she said, already pushing open the door to the hall.  
“I will not,” said the Ascian, sounding genuinely affronted.

Kallie sprinted down the hall, rounding to find a party of Crystal Braves flanking the doorway. She laughed as she ran, and they hurried after her. So easy to lead them into a narrower passage, where she could round on them and gout them with flame. Nabriales caught them from behind, muttering in his dark tongue about the coming of the end, and crackling black energy speared down the hallway. They fell and he rose, an unhallowed being, his cloak rippling like dark wings, and then she was off again. Her shoulder ached. She let it drive her.

The pain seared still more brightly as she rounded a corner and was faced with a sword in her face. She brought her staff up to block, catching the weapon on the wootz plating. Steel rung against steel, and she shoved upward before the blade could slide far enough to catch her fingers. She could see stars on the edges of her vision, and channeled her pain into astral flame—not a hungry gout as she had done moments before, but an unassuming ember, notable only for where she called it.

She burned the air from the soldier’s lungs, and he died breathing ashes. Nabriales smiled, stepping over him, and led. To the right, the solar, and he turned that way before she shouted for him to follow, and went left, back toward the antechambers where her fellows often gathered.

She mounted the stairs and saw dozens of cobalt uniforms, turning to regard her sudden advance. She backpedaled, stumbling into Nabriales, who put her behind him.  
“Run,” she urged him, and dove back into the labyrinthine halls of the Rising Stones. She did not hear his footsteps behind her—but she heard the advance of booted feet a moment later, soldiers of the Crystal Braves in hot pursuit.

The earth trembled underfoot. She staggered, stumbled, went down hard—on her injured shoulder, barely keeping hold of her blood-slick staff. Kallisti scrabbled to her feet, passing her staff into her right hand, clutching it with numb fingers so that she could press her left palm to her oozing wound.

She never thought she could miss Lensha so much.

Kallisti looked back as she ran, and saw Nabriales moving through the rising crowd of soldiers, as unconcerned with them as they were with him. His face was masked in the crimson glow of his sigil, but for all the darkness that seethed from him they were still outnumbered. She ran, dimly aware of how difficult it was to climb stairs.

Her hands were cold, so it was ice next, freezing in place the soldiers in blue she saw awaiting her up ahead. The hall stretched onward, no other set of stairs that she could see, so she shouldered open the last door on the left, because she could lean on it with her good side.

It was a dormitory—disused and dusty. Its window overlooked Revenant’s Toll. She was several stories up.  
“Jump,” Nabriales said, his voice at her ear. She glanced back at him. He was bowed over her, a hand outstretched behind him, as though he could—without even looking—cover the doorway. He reached past her, throwing open the sash of the window.  
“What?”  
“Either you jump or we fight our way back out, the way we came, and there are still more of them on the way.”  
“I’ll die.”  
“Do you think I would allow that now?” he asked, sounding genuinely annoyed by the possibility. She could hear the approach of boots, the raised voices of the Crystal Braves as they cleared each of the rooms in turn.

Kallisti slung her staff over her back, pulled herself up onto the windowsill with a cry of pain, and tried not to look down. The heights were dizzying. Her fingers were blood-sticky against the leaded casings of the window, and a fierce wind moaned through the canyon. She closed her eyes, let go of her perch, and leapt, pushing off with her legs.

It was cold, a night wind rushing over her face, through her hair, tearing away her hat. Then it was warm, and she got the sense that even with her eyes open she could not see through the complete blackness that surrounded her. All sense of gravity failed her. She knew her head from her feet only by orienting herself around her pain—that must be her right shoulder, she told herself, which meant she must know which way her head was facing. She did not breathe, and she was sure she must be dying. She thought of an ocean she had never seen.

Then she thought of the salt marshes of her home, of the sea crashing over the breakwaters and flooding the estuaries. She could smell them, she thought—although perhaps the salt that filled her lungs was merely the scent of her own blood. Then she felt rain upon her cheeks.

Kallisti opened her eyes, and found herself in Nabriales’s arms, her legs dangling freely as he clutched her, chest to chest.  
“I _told_ you I could float,” he reminded her, and set her down among the sedges.  
“I had other things on my mind,” she said. She leaned on him, no longer feeling strong enough to stand. “This is Yafaem,” she said after a moment. Even in the dim night, it seemed obvious to her. She knew these trees, the reeds and grasses that tickled at her calves, the scent of peat.  
“It seemed best to allow you to decide,” Nabriales said. “What is this place?”  
“It’s home,” she said, sagging with relief. He reached out to catch her by the shoulder, and she hissed in pain. “Careful,” she said.  
“That still troubles you?”  
“Of course it does,” she snapped. “It’s a wound.”  
“Hm,” he said, pulling her in, clamping his hand over her shoulder. She yelped in pain, looking up at his face in agony as though she might find there some reason for this torture.

He was not smiling sadistically, as she could not help but to have imagined. Instead, his mouth was set in a grim line of focus, and she imagined the frown that bent his brow behind the mask. The searing pain of contact ebbed after a moment, and she could feel the blood trickling from her wound reverse direction, flowing upward, back into her body. Her agonized flesh knitted, slowly, pulsing with pain for several minutes. She fought past it to watch as the damage she had done to herself in her desperate flight was mended, leaving no scar, even the skin around the wound free of blood—though it still clung to her fingers. When he lifted his hand, the cloth, too, was mended. It was like nothing had ever happened.  
“Oh,” she said. Her head swam.  
“There,” he said. “How fragile your mortal body.”  
“I still lost a lot of blood,” she said, lifting her hand to regard it. He curled his palm around her own, pressing her fingers to his lips. It stained them crimson, darker than his mask.  
“Little I can do for that now that we’ve left it in Mor Dhona,” he said, tone sardonic.  
“I need a place to rest. There’s … I think there’s a cave near here, we would use it when we were hunting in this area …”

She listened to the falling rain—pattering on leaves, splashing into the waters of the marsh. The wind blew through the grasses, and she could hear the call of frogs. “We’re safe,” she said. “No one … no one comes here but my clan, and … they’ll know me. If they find us.”  
Still it seemed an impossible task to reach the foothills, and she staggered through the mire until they found its mouth. It was cool and dry inside. She fell to her knees immediately, putting her back to the stone walls and sliding down. Nabriales crouched beside her. His hood had gone, sometime since their arrival here. His mask, too. He looked at her.  
“Are you staying? It isn’t much, but it should be safe. Or are you going … wherever Ascians go?”  
He shook his head. “There are things that require my attention, but these are eventualities. My window of opportunity has not yet closed.”  
She hummed out some acquiescence, letting her eyes close. The outer layers of her clothing were damp with rain, but the cloth against her skin was dry, and it seemed too much effort to undress now. It took most of her concentration to focus long enough to ask a single question.

“Why did you know to come for me?”  
“You asked,” he said.  
“Nnnn…no, I didn’t, I never said your name until you were already there.”  
He laughed, the bombastic sound of it filling the cave, redoubled and echoing around them. “Is that how you think this works, little fool?” he mused. “That you can speak my name and summon me, like a bound voidsent?”  
“When you think about it,” Kallisti said, “I _am_ Mhachi.”  
“Even the ancient sorcerers of Mhach could not command our kind,” Nabriales said, bristling with pride. “No. You cannot compel me.”  
“Then why did you come?”  
“I felt your distress,” he said. She felt aether prickle along the nape of her neck—distantly, as though through a haze of black felt. Kallisti realized then how drawn she was. “I thought you understood this.”  
“I didn’t realize …”  
“I could be banished to the most distant star and I would still feel you,” he said. “It was not my intent when I branded you, but in what came afterward …”  
“In Sharlayan?” she supplied.  
“We are entangled now,” he said. “A change in your aether is a change in my aether,” he said. “I can sense your soul as though you had laid it bare before me.”  
“Spooky,” she said. Then, “Isn’t that a weakness?”  
“Perhaps,” he admitted.  
“So that’s how you knew,” she said, “but I couldn’t compel you to act. That means … it was your decision.”  
“Yes,” Nabriales said.

“Isn’t that unusual?” she asked.  
“Yes.”  
Then the rising darkness swarmed up around her, and she let it claim her. Her struggle had wearied her. It was so much easier simply to let go.


End file.
